Sherill: I had been looking around forever for a house to buy. My realtor was a good friend of Holly's. The house I was looking at needed a lot of work. Holly does an incredible sales pitch and I bought the house. I bought a very old Cape built in late 1700s. Holly and I worked on the house for six months restoring it. Once I moved in, I had a big holiday party at my house and was talking to holly about starting a business to restore old houses.

Holly: At the end of the party she said "We had so much fun, let's start a business." I said, "Sure, call me in the morning. And she did!

CL: How did you find your first project, the Benjamin Spaulding house?

S: We'd been looking around this area. We came across some wonderful wrecks but nothing we could get our hands on. And a friend of Holly's had found this house in Townsend, Mass. which is ten minutes from us. And she told us about the house. We literally got in the car and looked at it and fell in love with it. The owner of the house was a nature lover who loved to hike and really bought the property for the land, 9 acres. He did not want the house. So he put it on eBay for $6,000. We just had to have it so we just bought it. This was 2002 into 2003.

We'd written our business plan and decided how we'd get funding when this project came our way. We met a land surveyor who liked what we were doing. We dismantled the house piece by piece, saving what we could.

H: That house was in fabulous shape.

S: It just didn't look it.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

CL: Why this business?

S: We share a common interest and we come at it in two different ways. New England is a terrifically old historic part of country. We have many houses built in 1700s that many people still live in and there aren't many areas who can say that. But the sad fact is that as people move to the country, these houses are being taken down. They sit on a lot of land, or they're too close to roads. People in the past have not seen their value. I think that's changing. Finally people are understanding how lovely and valuable these materials are. We want to restore these houses in their entirety. We'd like to reconstruct the original house as much as possible. And we research the families who lived in the house. We want the new owners to have a sense of continuity. When they stand on the floorboards, they'll know that 200 years ago another family stood there too.

H: I love design and work with a lot of architects but it's hard to balance the interior and exterior. I love old homes. The fact that these people had no tools and yet things match so nicely and are held together with pegs, it's just mindboggling to me. One problem we have is codes. We're considered new construction since we're taking apart and putting back together. And the standards are high. We needed to figure out how to build it like it was but build it to code. That was our immediate challenge and then we jumped into the fireplaces. You have to have brick surrounding the fireplace.

CL: Did you have a background in design?

H: I had a design firm and I did a lot of commercial design. Assembling the team is a real challenge all the time. We've gone to Sturbridge village, gone to the historic society to find builders.

S: Local lumber companies are a terrific source of knowledge and tradespeople. When we talk to the trade companies and we begin explaining what we do, we can tell pretty quickly whether they get it. If they want a challenge they're for us. We're looking for people who get it.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

CL: What about your family? Are they supportive? Do you both have children?

H: I'm married with two grown children. Everyone thought we were crazy. My husband had recently retired and he said that since I had supported him all these years, he'd do what I wanted. I thought about starting a bed and breakfast, so he was relieved I chose this. He's kept me going through everything. He's my rock. People offer advice all the time. We listen kindly and move on.

S: I'm not married and I have two grown children. We're doing a business that's so different. You have to have the courage of your convictions to keep going with it.

H: It's such a different thing and most people don't understand until they see it. My own brother didn't understand until he saw. People who love antiques and craftsmanship, they get it. Engineers love our houses. Most people have never seen anything like it. They buy houses today and assume that the quality is there.

S: There are many people in the homebuyer market who will not buy an old house. They don't like them. And then there are people who would love to buy one but won't because they think there will be a lot of problems. And you read stories about such people. With us, you get the best of new construction and the best of old homes, the quality, materials and ambiance of the old homes. Holly and I have figured out a good way of marrying the new and the old by adding the things that new families require. We want to bring the house up to the current times. We're adapting, recycling, and resaving. And it takes a lot of time to design each individual. Five or six months or more just working on the design, figuring out how to put the old house back into the new one. Then 6-12 months to build the house.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

CL: Did you use your own money for your first project?

S: Yes, we financed the first house with our own money. $350,000

H: Because we financed it at the beginning, we put so much of ourselves into our homes. We had a builder say to us once, "You're certainly not profit driven." And it's true. We do what we think is right. In 200 years there will still be people living in these houses.

S: We continue working on our business model. See how we can continue doing this but also expanding. After we dismantle a house, there are some things we can't use. We have enough materials to build a house ourselves. So what we'll need to figure out is how we can expand it enough to offer prospective homeowners a period saltbox, rather than an exact replica. Give people the opportunity to work with us at the design level.

CL: What have you learned about yourselves since opening your own business?

S: I'm the most anal rententive person in the partnership. That's not to say that Holly doesn't attend to detail, but she has a better perspective. I think in terms of the partnership, when you develop it and go through all the highs and lows of the business, the ones that work are the ones who understand each other's strengths and weaknesses and hold it together with humor. We work hard at trying to extract pleasure from the day to day stresses.

H: You can't imagine the fun we have. We're amazed that we survived some of these projects. For instance, we bought this one piece of land because it was a reject piece. Someone bought the land but wouldn't use it. So I wanted the house to be it further back and on an angle. And when they dug the foundation they hit rock. So they said we could get thru it with a jackhammer. So for two days the neighbors listened to this. And they couldn't crack it. So they got this guy who had a beer in one hand and two sticks of dynamite in the other. He put them in the site, lit the fuse, and it worked. I said do we have a permit for this?

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

S: It's important that people living in New England continue to enjoy the architecture of the area and we not lose these houses at the rate we are. It's important for them to stay where they are, but if that can't happen and it's going to be the bulldozer or us, I prefer that it's us. We figure out how to remove the house, dismantle it, and move it, while preserving the integrity. The memory of the original house and family will still be there. Also I think the homeowners who find our houses appealing want to be connected to history. It becomes important to them. We provide the documents, deeds, sometimes old pictures. So they have some original connection to the old family.

H: The challenge is the best part. Figuring out how to pull this all off, combining the old with the new. It's a worthwhile effort to do something like this.

What advice would you give to women who want to start their own business?

H: Think it through thoroughly and think about what your target market is and how you'll reach that market.

S: In our case, we have such a niche and it's a particular challenge in our business. It takes commitment, a bit of luck, it takes network building so that people know what you're doing, a sense of humor, stamina. A willingness to live with business 24/7 and you've gotta love it.

CL: You knew you were in business when…

H: When I met with our banker. It took a long time for the bank to take a risk on us. We gave them a business plan which was outstanding and they loved it, but they said you don't have a record so we can't give you any money. We knew we had a winner when people would look at the houses and think it was new construction. That was our big success. I knew I'd never be without inspiration or the desire to do more. Anytime I see an old house that's falling down, I am there. The excitement that comes over me, it's like finding a hidden treasure. Like when we excavate around the houses, we'll find an old coin or an old fork. Once we found the original deed to the Spaulding house in the chimney. Sherill ironed it and pasted it back together. It was actually and IOU between Benjamin Spaulding and his neighbor. It had his signature.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

S: I spent an evening with tweezers. We gave that document to the homeowners.

CL: Who are your greatest resources?

S: Occasionally another builder will be a great resource. And also some of the contractors. Contractors know who the best people are. They really do. they'll come up to us and say you really need to get in touch with us.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Country Living participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.